


Complimentary Security

by Ezlebe



Category: Justified
Genre: Gen, Implied Relationships, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 03:34:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2798039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ezlebe/pseuds/Ezlebe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The troublesome man is hunched over in the corner booth near the back, staring at a tabletop covered in glass bottles and tumblers. Raylan cautiously steps over, but it doesn't take too long to figure out who it is, though he will admit to surprise at the kid’s presence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Complimentary Security

 

 

 

"Mr. Givens," Libby greets with an unnecessary whisper, the very picture of guilt as she stands just outside his door on the lower step. "I am so, so sorry to wake you, but there's a man who won't leave."

Raylan looks passed her and sighs tiredly, running a hand through his hair. "Is he making trouble?"

"Well, um," Libby hums, looking even guiltier. "Not really...? But it's closing, so."

Raylan groans quietly, then opens the door a little wider. "Alright, let me put a shirt on." 

The troublesome man is hunched over in the corner booth near the back, staring at a tabletop covered in glass bottles and tumblers. Raylan cautiously steps over, but it doesn't take too long to figure out who it is, though he will admit to surprise at the kid’s presence.

"Jimmy Tolan," Raylan says with a sigh, slipping into the other side of the booth. "What brings you to darken my door tonight, and be very specific." 

Jimmy glances up, his eyes glassy and sad, then looks back down to his drink with a slump. He's quiet for a long moment, until he coughs roughly. "Figured this be the last place he'd look."

Raylan raises his eyebrows, suspicion growing, "Are you running from Boyd?" 

Jimmy hunches over even more, then nods just slightly.

"Jimmy, if he's doing something you're not comfortable with... "

"No, it's not anything -" Jimmy chokes suddenly, and shakes his head again. "I almost wish it was that." 

There's a few silent moments where Raylan doesn't believe him, then a few more later he enters a new realm of disbelief when Jimmy starts to honestly sniffle. It grows and grows until Jimmy puts his hands on his face to muffle the noise. 

Raylan glances over in shock to Libby, who sort of shrugs awkwardly and nods like this has been off and on all night. 

"What's going on, son?" Raylan asks reluctantly, feeling about fifty sorts of uncomfortable. 

"They run me out of Alabama, now they run me out of Kentucky," Jimmy confesses quietly, swallowing tightly and pursing his mouth in attempt to be firm. His red rimmed eyes glance up, welling with tears. "I liked it here, Marshal."

Raylan nods slowly, confusion only growing. "I thought you were running from Boyd?"

"May as well be," Jimmy says, rubbing hard at his face. "I just took off after I saw my Daddy talking to him." 

"Your daddy," Raylan repeats, humming slightly in persistent confusion. "Alright." 

"I'm - " Jimmy starts to choke slightly, the sniffling starting up again. "I - I can't help it, Marshal. I wouldn't be like this if I could." 

Raylan nods like he understands, and reaches across the table to slide Jimmy’s drink away when the kid reaches for it again.  

"Now son, again: you're going to need to be specific," Raylan says, affecting his best imitation of caring. He has a sinking feeling this isn't going to lead anywhere close to getting Boyd arrested. 

Jimmy mumbles something hoarsely, pressing his fingers into his eyes. 

Raylan resists the urge to roll his eyes and shakes his head slightly, "Didn't hear you there." 

"A fag," Jimmy croaks out, slouching over the table with a groan. "I don't know why I said that; why did I tell _you_?"

"Well, you did drink half the bar," Raylan mutters under his breath, leaning back in his side of the booth. He debates little before discretely pulling out his phone, and finding Boyd's number. 

If this isn't going to lead anywhere useful, he's going to get this kid out of his bar. 

_You lose something?_ He texts, then surreptitiously takes a picture of Jimmy's huddled over form. 

Boyd texts back a just few seconds later. _That boy got parents worse than your daddy and mine put together._

_You don't think Bo or Arlo'd do the same?_ Raylan asks, feeling some old wariness of even bringing it up, though technically Boyd did it first.

_They might have run us out of town, but I doubt something considerable that they'd go further than Kentucky to ruin us,_ Boyd insists, after a few too many seconds of animated ellipses that belies a much longer statement getting erased. It is probably true; neither man had been particularly fond of even getting out of the county, prison notwithstanding.

_You're right, they'd have just sent Bowman,_ Raylan rebuts after a few moments of thought, and feeling rather smart for it _._

_"_ Who are you texting?" Jimmy asks, looking up with knowing, if somewhat betrayed look. 

_Well they didn't, did they,_ Boyd returns, which is admittedly a fair point. A few seconds later, _Reassure him of my intention to disregard his father's advisement. Say what you need to say. You are so fond of telling stories._

Raylan stares at the texts for a long moment, then sighs, getting up and going toward the bar. He smiles tightly to Libby as she leans in across the counter with curious look. 

"I'll get him out of here, so you can go," Raylan says with an attempt at a reassuring smile. "I will be getting something to drink though, for my trouble."

He gets another message as he sits down, half full tumbler clinking against the table edge. _And if you could, please avoid anything that would lead to him inferring that I want to fuck him. I'm dead serious Raylan._

Raylan scoffs under his breath, setting the phone face down on the table. 

"Why'd you tell him?" Jimmy asks quietly, staring down at the phone. "You're not supposed to help him."

Raylan sighs deeply and takes a sip of his bourbon, reluctantly shrugging with one shoulder. "You probably know more than anyone that I often do, despite my better judgement." 

Jimmy nods once, though it almost seems like a polite spasm more than anything.

Raylan can feel the back of his neck getting hot, traveling up his ears, and desperately wishes he'd had the piece of mind to bring down his goddamn hat. He reaches up to pinch between his brows. "Fuck, I am goddamn _forty_."

"Marshal?" Jimmy inquires weakly, eyebrows pinched in wariness. 

"You know I shot him, right? Boyd, I mean," Raylan asks, hastily swallowing another sip of his drink. "That I missed." 

Jimmy's expression doesn't change much aside from growing more confused. 

"I think honestly, somewhere in that split second, I just couldn't do it," Raylan says with a quiet sigh. He looks away from Jimmy, tipping the glass in his fingers to distract himself with the ebb and flow of liquor.  "I think sometimes, usually when I'm trying hardest not to, that's the same reason I kept up with Ava even knowing it'd get him released - 'Cause sticking him in jail for the rest of his life was no better than watching him bleed on that floor."  

The bar goes quiet if just for the hum of the coolers, and Raylan wonders a little too late if Jimmy's going to relay all this to Boyd later, if somehow this will bite him on the ass the next time he walks into Johnny’s. He's not quite sure why he's gone this route of mutual confession and reassurance, and will heartily regret it if Jimmy turns out to be dumb as a box of rocks.

"But you… You're always trying to arrest him," Jimmy says slowly, pausing and swallowing as his voice cracks and goes hoarse.

"Am I?" Raylan asks, a scoff getting stuck in the back of his throat as he speaks in a dull tone. "Sometimes I feel like all that trying I do gets him further and further from it."

There's a few uncomfortable silent moments, then Jimmy clears his throat, though his voice still sounds like it's being raked over coals. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because Boyd told me — " Raylan laughs then, in a reluctant way that cuts down his throat and into his lungs. He shakes his head, downing the rest of his bourbon as a chaser. "He told me to tell you about high school and digging coal; being stupid teenagers, all that shit, but I can't do that, because honestly, it's all I got left of my Boyd, and…" He reaches up and scrubs at his brow, "I'm not letting anyone else have even a bit of that; it's mine." 

Raylan realizes a little too late he's breathing hard, a mix of sleeplessness and just that small bit of alcohol combining to embarrass the shit out of him. "So you know, Boyd doesn't give a shit who you fuck, just that you don't leave him when it gets hard." 

"I woul - Won't," Jimmy says quietly, but heartfelt. "I won't."

The phone buzzes on the table a few minutes of quiet later, and Raylan doesn't even bother to look, just waits until Boyd slips in catlike through the backdoor with its permanently broken lock. 

He steps up to their table and stands there a few moments, then reaches down to pick up Raylan's empty glass with a raised eyebrow and quiet, unexpected judgement. 

"Just take your damned gun-thug home," Raylan mutters, reaching up and rubbing his eyes with a forefinger and a thumb. "I'm done." 

"I'm so sorry, Boyd," Jimmy says suddenly, his expression a little too close to worshipful than Raylan is strictly comfortable. He'd like to think it’s the booze in Jimmy's system, but that's probably just wishful thinking. In fact, he probably just made that shit worse, giving the kid another thing to commiserate in with Boyd.

"That's alright, Jimmy," Boyd assures quietly, now reaching for Jimmy's empties and shoving them to the side. "Can you stand on your own?"

"Yeah… Yes," Jimmy says hesitantly, but he manages to do as asked, much to the surprise of Raylan. "We gonna get my truck tomorrow?"

"If you remember where you parked it," Boyd promises, sliding into the vacant seat as Jimmy slowly shuffles out the way Boyd just came. 

Boyd stares for a while, blessedly silent, then reaches for Jimmy's half finished glass. He downs whatever it was in one fail swoop, a slight twitch in his cheek the only tell of how bitter the taste must be going down. 

"The Tolan paterfamilias wanted to take him back to Alabama; promised to return him after he was better fit for societal niceties," Boyd relays, sounding as tired and disgusted as Raylan's ever heard him. "And while I know we ain't exactly at present marching in glitter and rainbows, I like to think even we had it better than that boy." 

"Mr Tolan happen to be in your sort of business?" Raylan asks quietly, pinching the bridge of his nose a final time before letting his hand drop, leaning back in the booth with a long sigh.

Boyd's face twists up harshly, then relaxes into something less sincere. "A respectable defense lawyer, and a member of a strict Southern Baptist installation somewhere in eastern Alabama."

Raylan lets that sit for a moment, then offers a small smirk. "So a little worse, then." 

Boyd smiles back crookedly. "Being an asshole is not yet an arrestable offense."

"You know, I could've lived without seeing that boy cry," Raylan mutters, letting Boyd's implication go and closing his eyes against the lighting. "Probably have to move now."

"Probably," Boyd agrees, sounding somewhere near Alabama himself, maybe a little further. 

Raylan's not quite sure if that's more to do with Boyd thinking hard or his slowly falling asleep. He takes another deep breath, swallowing a yawn, and near dislocates his jaw in the process. "I'm so goddamn tired." 

The very next thing Raylan registers is not Boyd's predictably loquacious reply, but instead the feel of bony fingers dug up under his ribs. 

"Jesus fucking Christ," he yelps, wearily shifting away from Boyd’s suddenly much closer hands. "What the hell?" 

If he weren't so exhausted, he'd probably start overthinking the fact he stupidly still feels comfortable enough to pass out asleep within the same city block as Boyd Crowder. As it is, he instead can only think that Boyd's got real talent for being an asshole.

"You're too old to be sleeping like that," Boyd says, raising his eyebrows pointedly as his fingers next dig into Raylan's shoulder to hasten his exiting the booth. "So get your ass in gear before I next get blamed for you twisting your back out." 

Raylan groans, shoving him away as they stand, "We're the same damn age."  

"Raylan, you're not the only one tired," Boyd says waspishly, huffing with annoyance. “And I still got hours to go.”

It feels like the first honest emotion Raylan's seen out of him in months, though he knows that's probably not true. He also knows it's odd to smile at it, but does so anyway, which leads to Boyd's eyes narrowing as he stops to stare in the middle of the dingy hallway.

"How much did you drink?" Boyd asks, glancing over him critically. 

" _Christ_ ," Raylan mutters, feeling his mood fall as he shoves Boyd toward the back door. "Get your ass out of Lexington." 

"Raylan," Boyd says sharply, grabbing onto the door as he steps out, turning on his heel. "You know what that shit did to Arlo." 

"Damn it, Boyd, it's not like you don't drink too," Raylan growls out, grinding his molars from the sudden onset of tension. "And there was a lot more shit wrong with Arlo than booze." 

"I don't drink to _sleep_ ," Boyd responds sharply, his wiseass tone just a little more grating than usual. "And as much as you hated that man, you're still bound by blood." 

"Leave before I arrest you for trespassing," Raylan says bluntly, then he pushes the door hard, so Boyd has to let go. 

Boyd stands there for a moment, eyeing him with an odd expression. "Alright, Raylan," he says eventually, lifting his hands and walking backwards a few steps. "Alright." 

Raylan watches him for another moment before he shoves the door closed and props up the makeshift lock, which is mostly just a twisted mess of repurposed rebar, and even manages to turn off the lights and get up to his room before up and passing out.

He wakes to a pair of texts the next morning, trying to slide his alarm off with exhaustion still lingering behind his eyelids. 

_You really want your baby girl taking care of any version of your daddy, come thirty years?_

And timestamped moments later, for contrast: _Jimmy says thank you, though I don't believe he'll remember much._

 

**Author's Note:**

> Certain elements of S5 may or may not be completely erased from my memory.


End file.
